Cross Kill

Chapter 11

“I didn’t know that about Gary, either,” I said.

“What’s this all about?” Virginia Winslow asked, studying me now.

“There was a cop shooting in DC,” I said. “A man who fit Gary’s description was the shooter.”

I expected Soneji’s widow to respond with total skepticism. But instead she looked frightened and appalled again.

“Gary’s dead,” she said. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

“He killed himself,” I said. “Detonated the bomb he was carrying.”

Her attention flitted to the boards. “That’s not what the internet is saying.”

“What’s the internet saying?”

“That Gary’s alive,” she said. “Our son, Dylan, said he’s seen it online. Gary’s dead, isn’t he? Please tell me that.”

The way she clenched the rifle told me she needed to hear it, so I said, “As far as I know, Gary Soneji’s dead and has been dead for more than ten years. But someone who looked an awful lot like him shot my partner yesterday.”

“What?” she said. “No.”

“It’s not him,” I said. “I’m almost certain.”

“Almost?” she said before a phone started ringing back in the house.

“I... I have to get that,” she said. “Work.”

“What kind of work?”

“I’m a machinist and gunsmith,” she said. “My father taught me the trade.”

She shut the door before I could comment. The bolts were thrown one by one.

I almost left, but then, remembering that voice I’d heard on my way in, I went around the farmhouse, seeing a small, neglected barn around which dozens of pigeons were flying.

I heard someone talking in the barn, and walked over.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

Pigeons started and whirled out the barn door.

There was a grimy window. I went to it, and peeked inside, seeing through the dirt sixteen-year-old Dylan Winslow standing there by a large pigeon coop, gazing off into space.

Dylan looked nothing like his father. He had his mother’s naturally dark hair, sharp nose, and the same dull brown eyes. He was borderline obese, with hardly a chin, more a draping of his cheeks that joined a wattle above his Adam’s apple.

“You need to learn your place,” he said to no one. “You need to learn to be quiet. Emotional control. It’s the key to a happy life.”

Then he turned and walked by the pigeon coop, running a hoop of keys across the metal mesh.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

The sound rattled the pigeons and they battered themselves against their cages.

“Be quiet now,” Dylan said firmly. “You got to learn some control.”

Then he pivoted and started toward me, raking the cages again.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

A disturbing little smile showed on the teen’s face, and there was even more upsetting delight in his eyes. I have a PhD in criminal psychology and have studied serial killers in depth. Many of them grew up torturing animals for sport.

Had Dylan’s father?

I stepped inside the barn. Gary Soneji’s son had his back to me again, walking away while raking the front of the cages.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

I took another two steps and noticed a large piece of cardboard nailed to one of the barn’s support posts.

There was a well-used paper target taped to the cardboard and six darts sticking out of it. The target featured a bull’s-eye superimposed over a man’s face. It had been used so many times that at first I didn’t know who the man was.

Then I did.

“Who the hell are you?” Dylan said, and then gaped when I faced him.

“From the looks of it,” I said, “I’m your dartboard.”